Clever Child
by Ergo Ipso Facto
Summary: Pre-FE9. If there was one thing everyone could agree on about Izuka, it was that he was clever. Clever and more than a litle scary.


It was a good life, and these were the rules: you shared everything you found, you never ratted anyone out, and you stayed away from Izuka. You violated curfew as much as possible and you paid minimal attention to lessons. Mostly you _stayed the fuck away from Izuka._

It always took the new kids a while to figure that out. He had a look about him, permanently confused and on edge, and he never ate that anyone else could see, and he always sat alone muttering feverishly to himself. He laughed at intervals and for no discernible reason. So they usually started out feeling bad for him, trying to talk to him, figure out how the poor bastard had ended up so unhinged. This could last a couple of months, but eventually the way he looked through you and the way he laughed and the way he _smelled_ would start to gnaw on them and they'd start avoiding him. It was hard to explain that smell. He was usually clean enough, for a dirt-poor orphan out of Shifu. He just smelled like death.

Father Sofronio liked Izuka. Here was a boy, he always said, who knew the meaning of effort. Here was a boy who always applied himself, who was sure to get out of here someday, make a mark on the world. He couldn't have been much more than ten, but he was a clever child. _Such_ a clever child.

They didn't listen to Sofronio much. He was good to them. He and the other priests had given them a place to stay, and food, and if you wanted to learn they would teach you, and if you didn't you could sleep or stare out windows or whatever you wanted as long as you stayed in the room and didn't bother anyone who was trying to pay attention. He was _very_ good to them, but he believed that everyone was good, and they knew better. You couldn't take someone seriously if he believed crazy shit like that.

The pecking order tended to get sorted out with fights and rearranged based on who'd finally managed to beat whom ("The prick. 'Bout time someone took him down a notch"). Izuka had only been challenged once. Sofronio thought it was because he'd asked them to leave the poor boy alone, really, he was so much smaller than the rest of them. They let him think that.

The truth was that the whole time Tosim had been whaling on him, he hadn't made a sound. Tears had been streaming down his face by the end, but that was only his reaction. He'd barely even tried to protect himself. When it was over, he'd straightened, bruised and bloody, spat out a tooth, and said in the oddest voice any one of them had ever heard, "Go on, you brute. That's all you'll ever be good for, but I… _I…!"_ Then he'd started laughing. It was the first time anyone had heard that high-pitched, old-man cackle of his, and it scared them. And for the next week, any time anyone had looked at him, they'd seen him staring at Tosim and smiling. That was why they left him alone.

There were other reasons. One time he'd disappeared for two days and Sofronio had been so worried and they'd found him elbow-deep in the carcass of a cow, covered in blood and worse, whistling. Then there were those few months in his fourth year living at the church, when he decided to be more sociable, and told them that he was actually a noble, the Viscount of Shifu, only his entire family had been burned alive with the manse, and what _sounds_ people make when they're dying, and how it reeks for so long afterward, and how the land was so dead that in order to survive on his journey from there to here he'd had to eat – they'd always told him to shut up before he'd said what.

And there was the girl. There were girls among their numbers, sure, two or three at a time, and once there had been five. But they didn't count. No, this was a real girl, one who couldn't tie you in a knot, one who wore shoes. She hadn't been there long. She'd come to the church for sanctuary, hiding from somebody, and everyone was willing to bet that no one else had the stones to talk to her. All of them were right. She was very pretty. Wasted on Izuka. It was the most horribly unfair thing ever, but newcomers always pitied for him, because they didn't know better.

No one knew what she said to him. She just walked over and sat next to him, looking earnest and talking in a soft and beautiful voice. At least one of the other orphans was perfectly willing to stab him right then and there, because all he did was look annoyed. She kept trying.

"Do you think you will be remembered for being pretty? Do you think it will make you live forever? You'll die and everyone will forget you," he said suddenly. "You'll see. You silly, silly, vapid people. You'll all see." He looked around at the others. He wasn't smiling this time. They all pretended they were doing something else.

"The key is knowledge," he told the girl a few days later, in the vestibule an hour before dawn (at least, this was how Jeran said it happened, and they usually believed Jeran). "And I have it. I'll have all of it, someday."

"That's nice, Izuka." She started backing away.

"That's why I'm better than you."

"I-I see."

"Do you feel sorry for me? I feel sorry for you. You poor, blind, beautiful thing. You hardly know what you're missing. Come with me."

"Come with you where?"

Izuka laughed. "Wherever I go."

"Where are you going?" she asked (Jeran said she looked scared and confused, but a little curious. She would. She was very pretty, but they'd never accused her of being bright).

Izuka looked furious. "Why do you pester me with these redundant questions? Questioning my wisdom, no less! I can't believe this injustice, no, it's so very..." Then he softened, as much as a small crazy boy with eyes like a starved weasel could (it was universally agreed that this must have been the scariest part). "I can't expect you to understand. That's why this is a charity. You see? I will have someone beside me to witness my triumph."

"Triumph? Who are you fighting? You're scaring me."

"Everyone," Izuka said matter-of-factly. "Everything. Perhaps the goddess herself. Nothing will be unknown to me." He began pacing. "And who is worthy of sharing that glory? No one. But clearly someone must –"

"What are you talking about?"

"Silence," Izuka snarled and kept pacing. "No one is worthy. So the one I choose will be chosen randomly." He waved a hand at her. "You. I choose you, because you're stupid and beautiful. Do you understand? There's no need. Just follow me around and nod."

The girl was silent for quite a while. Izuka was making her uncomfortable (Jeran didn't tell them this, but they assumed). "Izuka. Um. It's... very kind of you to... I don't really know what you're saying," she said finally, laughing nervously. "So I don't think I can agree to anything. I mean, I'm only staying here until my father –"

Izuka turned his back on her. "Fine. Go away."

She sighed in relief. "I'll see you later."

"No, you won't." Darkness started swirling around Izuka. A mist of shadows. It gathered at his feet and spread out, and up, and into the air. Things that were there one minute weren't the next (Jeran couldn't explain it any better than that; he'd gotten scared and run away. All they knew was that it must've been bad – he didn't scare easy). There was a scream. The girl wasn't there the next day. Ever afterward, half of his mumblings were in a language none of them could recognize. The other half were always about "the future will recognize this" or "the academic community will recognize that" or "an army of puppets."

They remembered the conversation Sofronio had had with Izuka the day after the girl disappeared. There were more witnesses than Jeran this time.

"How did you learn magic?"

"It was in a book."

"_Dark_ magic? In my church?"

"You don't know everything."

"Well, no, I suppose not, but did you mean to kill that girl?"

A long pause. "I can't control it very well yet."

"Oh, Izuka. I'm so sorry. Come pray with me, and then we'll see about teaching you more about... about this ability of yours. All right?" There was no "why would you want to learn something so foul," no "you shouldn't have been in my books," and no "how did you even manage that all by yourself, what have you done for this power, what have you sacrificed." Only praise and pity for this poor tragic genius.

Mainly you stayed away from Izuka because he was so damn clever.


End file.
